Over the past several years, we’ve used this blog to share quite a bit about commercial security. This includes our recent post on Adding Fire Security to Your Business. Creating business security brings about its own unique challenges above and beyond those faced by homeowners. Therefore, we do our best to educate and guide our commercial customers through the security design process. In this post, we focus on sharing some large business security tips for those whose property looms larger than our small and medium-sized commerical customers.

First, we’ll share some of the exact security threats faced by large businesses. Learning about these challenges will greatly enhance our understanding about how we address them. Then, we’ll get into the ways we solve these issues. This includes breaking up your alarm into multiple “partitions” to maximize its effectiveness. From there, we’ll look at the power of installing surveillance to watch over your entire property. Finally, we’ll focus on the role that access control systems have in securing “plus-sized” commercial properties. Now, let’s get started by seeing how large businesses create their own unique security challenges.

Large Business Security Challenges

In general, businesses often have different security needs compared to their residential counterparts. For example, businesses have many employees that come and go every day. Furthermore, commercial properties also experience employee turnover. Therefore, businesses must maintain a level of day-to-day security to ensure that employees only enter the building when they should. Moreover, business owners must also make sure that ex-employees do not have access to the building. This factor gets even more important when it comes to those employees who get terminated rather than leaving of their own accord.

Additionally, commercial properties have a way of inviting burglaries. After all, businesses generally have tools, technological equipment, cash, and other valuables inside. They also stand vacant for large periods of time. These two factors make them uniquely vulnerable. Of course, larger businesses experience these threats in an outsized manner. After all, employee security gets tougher as the amount of employees balloons. Furthermore, larger businesses also prove harder to secure while they are vacant simply due to their large number of potential entry points. For this reason, standard business security concerns multiply when we deal with larger businesses. With this overview in mind, let’s now turn out attention to some specific steps we can take to address large business security.

A hand entering a code on a keypad

Creating multiple alarm partitions, each with their own keypad, can help you secure your entire building effectively.

Adding Multiple Alarm Partitions

When we use the term “partition” while discussing your alarm, we refer to the ability of your security system to effectively operate as several smaller, individual alarms with their own security contacts, keypads, and sirens. This allows people to work in one area of a large business while the rest of the business stays armed. Conversely, it also allows you to arm small sections of the building while people work in the rest of it. For example, we often create a separate partition for owners’ or managers’ quarters inside a commerical property. This keeps snooping employees or even outside burglars out while allowing for movement throughout the rest of your building.

Creating multiple alarm partitions adds a couple additional layers of security as well. When we create different partitions, we can also provide additional alarm code control by programming user codes into each partition individually. Therefore, an employee who should only have access to part of your business cannot disarm the alarm in the rest of the building. Furthermore, we can also provide partition-specific contact information. This ensures that an alarm creates a phone call to the appropriate person for that section of your business. Large businesses with many departments over a significant footprint often benefit from this ability. Next up, let’s look at how surveillance cameras aid large business security.

Keeping Eyes on Your Entire Property

Using cameras to monitor activity greatly enhances the security on any property. As a large business security measure, the importance of installing surveillance only grows. Installing cameras grants business owners the ability to view any area of their property at any time. Exterior cameras can help secure your building by catching burglars in the act of breaking in. In some cases, our surveillacne customers catch would-be thieves scoping out their property before a break-in ever occurs. The ability to solve and even prevent these breaches make commercial surveillance uniquely effective.

Additionally, they can also provide an added layer of financial security in case of alleged negligence. For example, large commerical properties often receive complaints of car damage in their parking lots or bodily harm created by unsafe conditions. Exterior cameras can help you determine the causes and truth behind these claims. In many cases, the camera footage can get you off the hook for those attempting to defraud you. Employees or customers who claim to have slipped and fallen, in particular, often get disproven through the use of a property’s outside cameras. We’re now ready to share our final large business security measure. Last but certainly not least, let’s see the important commercial security role played by access control systems.

Using Access Control to Your Advantage

Access control systems represent one of the most effective means of controlling and tracking access to your property. This security measure involves using advanced lock equipment to control access to your property. Access control systems utilize electronic locking hardware to operate specific doors within a business. Rather than using a key at these doors, users approach a keypad or a credential reader and present either a code or a physical credential such as a card or fob. Users who present an approved credential will then be able to open the door after the reader interacts with the door’s electronics to unlock it. Business owners can allow each credential to open only certain doors at specific times. This proves especially useful when securing larger businesses!

An employee using an AMAG access card to unlock a door

Access card readers, such as this one made by AMAG, help business owners control and track access to their entire property.

In addition to controlling access to certain doors, access control systems include software that tracks access as well. Every time an employee approaches an access door, it creates a time-stamped event that you can view on a computer by logging in to your access control system. This allows you to easily track employee activity within your business. Furthermore, it allows you to see if anyone tries to enter doors in your business that they should not attempt to enter. For example, if employees without the necessary permission attempts to use their credentials to enter your business during a time that you do not want them to do so, the system will both deny access and “flag” this event. At that point, you will know which employee attempted this breach. The security and flexibility offered by these systems makes them an extremely valuable piece of large business security.

Putting Our Large Business Security Tips to Work

We hope that this post helps you secure your business effectively and efficiently. Moreover, we encourage you to contact us with any questions that this post raises for you. We are always happy to help those seeking to add security in any way we can. Additionally, we invite you to take advantage of our free site survey program. We offer complimentary security audits and equipment quotes to both new and existing customers alike. During our visit, we can address any security concerns you may have. Furthermore, we will also make suggestions based on our own observations of your property.

Perhaps you have some security in place now, but wish to utilize a few of the tips shared here. Or, maybe you have very little security equipment at the moment and wish to get started on the right foot. Either way, we’d love to work with you to create a security plan! Over our thity-four years (and counting!) in business, we’ve helped hundreds of businesses experience the best security available. Together, we can create a plan to keep your large business, and everyone in it, as safe and secure as possible.